Phantom Wings
by lexxiglass5
Summary: Fluff Destiel. Cas isn't adjusting well to being human. Dean and Sam have done everything they can think of to snap the angel out of it, but nothing works. Cas just wants his wings back. T just because I'm paranoid. Cover art by the amazing georginoschkavincen. Find her on tumblr cause she's awesome.


Phantom Wings

It had been exactly one month, twenty-one days, seven hours, and forty-seven minutes and since the angel Castiel fell from grace and became human. Dean Winchester knew because he counted every mortal moment of his boyfriend's life.

And it was killing the hunter to do it.

For the first few days, Cas barely moved. He didn't leave the bunker, didn't stand up unless he had to go to the bathroom. He just sat on his bed, silently staring at the wall. Sam tried to coax him out of it, Dean tried to talk him up, nothing worked. Hell, Dean had to practically force food and water down Cas' throat.

"It's like being with a damn coma patient," Dean told Sam one day after he fruitlessly tried to kiss Cas out of his stupor. He'd sat there with Cas for hours, holding his hand, muttering emotional little things he never said unless his life—or his angel or brother—depended on it. He'd pressed little kisses to Cas' cheeks, his nose, his forehead, his lips, trying to wake him in some way and pull him back to life.

Sam just shrugged. "He'll get better soon," he reassured his brother. He pretended not to see how tired Dean looked.

Thankfully, Cas did. After the first week he got up and sat down at the table for breakfast, moving slowly like it caused him pain. He ignored Dean's startled but pleased look. He walked to the bathroom to take a shower, which God knew he needed. The day after that, he got up, shaved, and went out for a walk early enough to beat insomniac Dean. The day after that, he took the Impala out for a drive, which made Dean nearly have a stroke because both his babies went missing in one morning. At the end of the week, Dean told Sam to go on a solo supply run while he and Cas had a chat (thankfully, Sam pretended not to notice the all-too obvious hickey on Cas' neck, and how they seemed to be a little breathless and rumpled from their 'chat'). And so on and so forth, until Cas was almost a decent, fully functioning human being.

Almost. Because for one month, twenty-one days, seven hours, and forty-seven minutes, Cas was just a little different from the average human.

At first, Dean just thought it was Cas being Cas, but then one hot night they got back from a particularly hard hunt. Cas went to sleep shirtless, and Dean noticed something he'd never seen before. In his sleep, Cas tensed the muscles of his back and shoulders, like he was trying to pull his nonexistent wings in. The skin of his back twitched and Cas shivered. Dean watched the former angel with fascination, because he could sleep when he's dead, right? Cas repeated these gestures multiple times in the fifteen minutes Dean watched him.

The next night, Dean had his arm wrapped around the ex-angel's shoulders. He could feel the sinew in his lover's back pulling tight and then loosening. "Cas?" he asked in the darkness.

"Yeah?" Cas asked, rolling over to face his boyfriend.

"Can you still…feel your wings, sometimes?" Dean asked.

Cas was quiet for a moment. "Yes," he said finally. "Sometimes they hurt, a lot. It feels like they're stretched out too far, and I can't close them." More silence. A deep sigh. "Dean, I miss being an angel."

Dean swallowed hard. "I know," he said, stroking Cas' bare back. He knew it was selfish, but he couldn't help but think: if you were an angel, you couldn't be with me.

"I miss my brothers and sisters," Cas continued. The words seemed to tumble from his lips. "I miss being…a part of something. And I miss being stronger." He shifted slightly in the bed, pressing closer to Dean. "But most of all, I miss flying."

Dean turned to look at his boyfriend. "Flying?" he asked. Cas hadn't mentioned it before.

"Things were so easy, and—" he chuckled sadly, not meeting Dean's eye. "Dean, you would have loved to fly with me. You can go anywhere, anytime. It's the best feeling in the world."

Dean pressed his chin to the top of the former angel's head. "Can't lie, flying's not exactly my thing. But I can understand how it feels to be able to go anywhere anytime."

Cas looked up. "You can?"

"Sure, when dad taught me how to drive and gave me Baby," he said with a grin.

Cas rolled his eyes and sighed again. "No, you don't understand, Dean," he said bluntly. He turned over, away from Dean. The hunter shrugged.

"Suit yourself," he said.

After that, it was much easier to see. When they were driving, Cas would get in the backseat and lean forward a little, so his 'wings' would have room to spread. If Dean shut the car door on him too fast, he'd flinch a little, like he expected his wings to get slammed in the door. When he was walking, he'd walk very carefully around crowded spaces, as if he was afraid of knocking things over.

Although Cas never told Sam, Dean's brother picked up on what was happening. "It's Phantom Limb Syndrome," Sam told Dean. They were restocking the ammunition in the trunk of the Impala. Cas was inside the bunker.

Dean stared at him. "This isn't another ghost sickness thing, is it?"

Sam shook his head. "Lots of amputees get it. They report like, uh, tingling in the limb that was amputated, a feeling of swollenness, pain. That's what Cas has, with his wings."

"Great, so how do we fix it?" Dean asked.

"We don't," Sam said, frowning slightly. "I've been reading up on it, the most effective cure is mirror-box therapy. Say a man has pain in his phantom left hand, feels like he's clenching it too tight or something. He'll put his right hand next to a mirror, flat, so it's reflected. The mirror image makes the brain think the body's got a left hand again, and he can unclench his hand in his head."

"But Cas doesn't have a right or a left wing," Dean said.

"Right, so it wouldn't work. Besides, we'd need a mirror box the size of the Impala," Sam said.

"Awesome," Dean said sarcastically. "Well, I'll let you know when I can find one of those."

One month, twenty-one days, seven hours, and forty-seven minutes after Castiel lost his grace, Dean had this conversation in mind, shopping at Goodwill for a shirt to replace the one a Wendigo shredded in the Appalachians. Dean would never admit it, but he genuinely liked Goodwill stores. They smelled kind of nice, musty, like grandparents' houses. The people in the stores were quiet, never looked at you strangely, didn't judge who you were or where you'd been. The life of a hunter had ruined Dean's perceptions of almost everything in the world, but for the life of him he couldn't imagine anything bad happening in Goodwill. It was too peaceful.

Sam and Cas were back at the bunker, making dinner. Normally Dean would be rejoicing in a rare night to himself (he loved Cas and Sammy, but sometimes a man just needed some quiet). Today he was feeling too troubled to enjoy it. Cas was hurting, it was obvious, and another obvious thing was that Dean could do nothing about it except sit on his haunches and wait for his boyfriend to snap out of it. _If_ he snaps out of it, Dean thought darkly. He wandered through the men's aisle, grabbed a well-worn, faded black t-shirt, and started for the cashier when something caught his eye. It poked out of the toy aisle—a corner of black fabric. He walked over and picked up the object, examining it.

Dean Winchester was a thirty-four year old hunter who'd seen more of heaven, hell, Purgatory, and the world in general than he'd have liked to. But he still got excited about little things. He could feel an almost childish enthusiasm building in his throat. He grinned, weighing the black object in his hand. This was perfect, just what he needed. Out of a habit forced on him by Castiel, he thought, Thanks, God.

After checking out (he paid in his own cash won from poker games, Cas got so fussy about fraud) he drove home humming. His gift for Cas lay in the passenger seat. When he got back to the bunker, he yelled, loud enough for his brother and the ex-angel to hear, "Cas! Get your feathery ass out here!"

Immediately, he winced. He shouldn't have said that. Cas wasn't, and would never be, feathery. But he wanted to give Cas his present outside, with just the two of them.

Cas walked out. When he saw the object in Dean's hand, he frowned and tilted his head to the side, like a confused puppy dog. "What in my father's name is that, Dean?"

Dean grinned, took a deep breath, and held it out to his boyfriend. "They're wings, Cas." And they were wings, though not exactly like Cas', of course. They were a Batman toy (ironically), part of a kid's costume. Dean had tried them out in the store—you could crank them in and extend them and everything.

If Cas' head could tilt any further sideways, it did in that moment. "Those are not wings. I have—_had_—wings."

Dean felt his confidence slip a little. "Don't be a dick," he said. "I spent three dollars on these things."

"Those are not wings," Cas insisted.

Dean scowled. "Alright, you know what, fine," he said. He threw the wings on the ground. "I get it."

"What do you mean, Dean?" Cas asked, his voice serious.

"You lost your family—so did I. You fell from heaven—I went to hell," Dean said. He started pacing, walking a short distance up and down the dirt road in front of the bunker. "I know what it's like to lose something…so precious you think nobody understands what your loss feels like. And god knows I've tried to be understanding of this, of you—" Dean paused to wave a hand at his boyfriend. "But goddamn it, Cas, sometimes you just have to suck it up. I know you're hurting. I know you miss your family. Who doesn't? But now, me and Sammy, we're your family. And it'd be really nice if you started appreciating that, instead of moping around all day!"

Dean stopped his rant and gazed at the ex-angel, waiting for him to say something. When Cas was silent, he threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat. "Why do I even bother," he wondered. He shoved his hands into his pockets and started to walk towards the door of the bunker.

Cas took a slow step forward, leaned down, and gently picked up the batwings. "How do they work?" Cas asked.

Dean stopped, his hand on the door. He closed his eyes. Count down from three, he thought. 3…2…1. He turned back around and walked over to his boyfriend.

"You put them on like a backpack," Dean said. Cas slid his arms into the straps. Dean had to suppress a smile at the sight of the man standing there like a dummy, looking utterly perplexed and wearing a child's toy. Don't smile, you're mad at him, Dean thought. "Now, pull this string to crank this wing in, and you can pull the same cord on the other wing to pull that one in." He reached out to pull the strings that tucked the wings in. Cas watched him, his blue eyes focused. When both wings were cranked all the way in, Dean yanked on a plastic ring attached to the wings. The batwings unfolded with a snap. "And that's how it works," Dean said, taking a step back and folding his arms. Even though Dean was still mad, even he had to admit that God, Cas looked adorable.

Cas pulled on the cords again, cranked them in, then pulled the ring to make the wings pop back out. He turned his head from side to side, then just stared at Dean for a moment. The hunter waited expectantly. Then the unbelievable happened. A slow, dazzling grin spread across Cas' face.

"You like them?" Dean asked.

"Yes," Cas said, looking over his shoulder at the back of the wings. He practically spun in a circle trying to see his back. "These make me…very happy."

"Well, good," Dean said. Don't smile, he reminded himself.

"These feel—well, they're not perfect, of course," Cas said, stopping in his movements to face Dean again. "But my wings…don't hurt anymore."

Finally, Dean let slip a crooked grin. "I'm glad," he said. Cas walked forward and wrapped his arms around the hunter, so suddenly that Dean was taken by surprise.

"Thank you, Dean," Cas said. He pressed his face into Dean's chest.

Dean kissed the former angel's forehead. "No problem," he said.

Cas pulled back, his eyes abruptly serious. "I apologize for moping," he said. "I don't mean to. I just need some time."

"No, sorry, it's my fault," Dean said. Even he knew, at heart, he and Cas were just a walking cliché—he could never stay angry at the ex-angel for long.

"No, you're right," Cas said. "I need to…get over myself. Grow up. I think these will help," he added, looking at the toy wings on his back.

Dean suppressed a snort of laughter. Who'd have thought a toy would help an adult man grow up? "Alright, I'm happy for you, man. Enough with the flowery feelings for now, let's get some dinner."

Cas nodded and followed Dean to the bunker door, still wearing his wings. "Dean," he said just before they walked in, as if he'd forgotten something. Dean looked over his shoulder. Cas looked up at him, earnest. "I love you."

Dean smiled. No matter how many times Cas told him that, he'd never get used to it. "You too," he said, and pressed his lips to Cas' before pulling the bunker door open.

And this was how, one month, twenty-one days, eight hours, and five minutes after the angel Castiel ceased being the angel Castiel, a tired human named Cas found peace. When Sam learned about Cas' new wings, he laughed himself onto the floor, but Dean convinced him (on pain of death) to say nothing to Cas. The former angel wore his wings everywhere except for hunts, drawing stares from passersby, but Sam and Dean pretended as if everything was normal, no grown man wearing toy batwings here. Sometimes Cas even wore the wings to sleep, which Dean grumbled about but didn't really mind, even when Cas turned over and slapped Dean in the face with the wings. Cas was happy, and that was all that mattered. Dean knew Cas was going to outgrow the toy wings someday, and he knew Sam hoped and prayed for that day to come soon. But for now, the hunter Dean Winchester enjoyed seeing his boyfriend, the man he loved, walking around with toy wings (sometimes running when he thought nobody was looking), happy as Dean had ever seen him.

_-The End-_

_Note from the author:_

_I tried to post batwings pictures for reference, but apparently I cannot. The best I can do is tell you to Google 'batman batwings toy.' Seriously, I just bought my own from Goodwill, which is what inspired this story, these wings are amazing and wonderful._

_Here is a link to a Youtube video about mirror box therapy:_

_watch?v=YL_6OMPywnQ_

_^^ This is really interesting to me._

_Hope you enjoyed the fic!_


End file.
